


Don't Hang Your Head for Me

by Sorrel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Family, Gen, post-Swan Song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-24
Updated: 2010-09-24
Packaged: 2017-10-12 04:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/120587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorrel/pseuds/Sorrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lisa is a list-maker, and she keeps lists of all things Dean in her head. They're not what you'd call a traditional family, but she's happy and Ben's happy and Dean's getting there and that's all she asks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Hang Your Head for Me

**Don't Hang Your Head for Me.**

 _But I think that it could get better  
And I think that we've seen the worst  
And if it takes a couple drinks to get the devil off your sleeve  
Well honey, god knows you won't be the first._

 _Baby don't cry  
Don't hang your head for me  
It's a matter of time  
It's a matter of getting by._

 **~*~**

Lisa's an organized person. She knows the stereotype of the artsy-fartsy disorganized New Age featherbrain, but fuck it, that's never been her. She grew up an only child with no dad and an overworked mom, and if she hadn't been organized, she wouldn't have survived raising herself. Her mom's second marriage had brought a stepfather and a stepbrother and a significant upgrade in living conditions, but that was in her teens and by then her patterns were pretty much set.

Lisa loves lists, especially. It started with to-do lists, those cornerstones of organized living, but she got to depending on them so much that she uses lists for practically everything now. It's kind of a joke with all the other moms and it's totally alien to Ben, who sorts his life automatically according to some arcane ten-year-old system with very little deliberate thought involved, but she loves it. Every time she starts to stress out, she can take a deep breath and make a list and that shit will be _handled._

Dean doesn't get the list thing, either, but apparently Sam was a list-maker too ( _naturally,_ Lisa's more cynical side supplies) so he treats the whole thing with a casual ease that Ben's just starting to grow into. When they need something from the store he always tells her even if he's the one running the errands, because he just assumes that she's the Keeper of the Grocery List. (Which she is, but that's not the point.) Dean is like Ben in that he handles life by categorizing, but life has also taught him to work with different systems, because some part of Dean will eternally be the bridge between a distant father and a younger brother he could love but never hold on to. To Dean, compulsive list-making is not a bizarre quirk; it doesn't even register on his radar of strange behavior. Dean actually seems to consider them a bastion of normalcy, which Lisa finds hilarious on a daily basis.

Lisa's never told Dean about the lists she makes about him. Mostly they're in her head, but some of them she writes down so that she can someday show them to Ben, when he's the funny-wise young man she knows he's gonna grow up to be. He'll get it, she thinks, because Ben, much like the man who's not his father but is his parent, is the kind who understands things.

 **~*~**

Things she doesn't quite have the heart to tell Dean:

-She can change her own oil.  
-She can also fix her own plumbing.  
-Ben already knows long division.  
-Eleven is, probably, way too young to be even _talk_ about driving lessons.  
-The lawn really does not need to be cut twice a week.

Dean seems to find certain parts of "normal life" absolutely irresistible. Lisa kind of suspects that it's just because he's never had one, but he's unreasonably delighted about the stupid little things she takes for granted, like going grocery shopping or organizing the garage. It's kind of funny, but really sad, too, at the same time, because Lisa watches him sorting laundry and realizes that most of his guidelines for how to live a normal life come from television.

Life's never like television, she wants to tell him. It's messy and stupid and sometimes it's hilarious and sometimes it's heartbreaking and sometimes it's just so fantastic it takes your breath away, and that's just as true for people who have houses in the suburbs with mortgages and car payments as it is for hunters who have the weight of the world on their shoulders. It's just the trappings that make it look different.

But ultimately that's just another thing she doesn't have the heart to tell him, because the trappings obviously mean a lot to him. Maybe it's a case of overvaluing the trivial because he never had them, or maybe everyone underrates the simple pleasures. Or maybe Dean believes that life _should_ be like a tv show, at least a certain kind of show, because in family-oriented sitcoms no one ever dies, and no one ever leaves, and family always wins.

 **~*~**

Things that haven't changed about Dean:

-He still likes his burgers medium rare.  
-He keeps at least one pair of lock picks in his shirt cuffs at all times. (She didn't really comment on this during their whirlwind affair back in the day, because at the time she was _looking_ for a bad boy, but now she's heard his many and sundry handcuff stories and it's even funnier.)  
-He blushes if you bring up his freckles.  
-He stutters and starts to lie if you bring up his family.  
-He goes all googly-eyed when he sees her going her floor routine in the living room first thing in the morning. (She could move it to the porch, it's not really chilly just yet, but he's always awake then anyway and honestly she finds his attempts at _not_ perving out to be hilarious.)  
-He's got the best hands, calloused and huge with heavy knuckles and a long, long life line; he still gives the best neck rubs, too.  
-He can't sleep for more than six hours straight if he can't hear someone else breathing.  
-He prefers Jack Daniels, and makes a face when she mixes herself a gin and tonic.  
-He misses his brother every second of every day.

 **~*~**

The number of people that got a weird look on their faces when they learned that Dean had actually moved in with her: twenty-six and counting.

Lisa knows that Dean's presence in her house is viewed with a general sense of confusion and unease. The other moms gossip about him with giggles hidden behind her hands. Ben's teachers look uncomfortable when Dean shows up at her side for parent-teacher conferences, and Lisa got more than one call in the first couple weeks about the "strange man in a big black car" who kept picking her son up from school.

A couple of the parents like Dean, the ones who realized something had replaced their kids and knew that Dean was the one that brought them back. They like him, but they're a little awkward around him, torn between nervousness and gratitude and their own unwillingness to believe in the reality of the unknown that's Dean's status quo.

Ben's friends are actually the only ones to love him without reservation. They think he's the coolest thing since sliced bread, and Dean soaks up the attention (and the hero-worship, though he refuses to call it that) like a plant soaking up sunlight. So at least _that's_ working out. Dean is the first to admit that he's a wreck of a human being, she knows, but she knew from the first glance of him with Ben that he's one of those people who are just thoughtlessly, easily good at dealing with kids, so she leaves Little League practice to him with no small amount of relief.

And, okay, so this means that most of Dean's friends are under the age of thirteen, which is a little weird, but Dean seems as happy as Dean ever gets, so she's not going to push him over it. She's pretty sure that the other parents will come around eventually, and in the meantime Dean's okay with their little circle of three, him and Lisa and Ben and his good-natured mentorship of Ben's rough-and-tumble throng. It was just him and Sam for the longest time, and sometimes she catches a stunned, wondering look on his face and she knows that what he has now seems like a bounty of riches.

Not that Lisa underestimates her charms or anything, but that's kind of the saddest thing she's ever heard.

 **~*~**

Things that are different about Dean:

-When he gives her a neck rub it's followed by an awkward good-night hug, instead of unfastening her bra.  
-He doesn't try to hide it when he's sad, which is most of the time, unless Ben's around.  
-He goes through the bottles of Jack a lot faster.  
-He stutters and starts to lie if she brings up his family, but then he winces and remembers where he is and then either a) tells the truth or b) just changes the subject or c) goes quiet. (The third option happens the most often. Lisa tries not to bring up his family.)  
-Everything else.

 **~*~**

Jobs Dean is qualified to work:

-Mechanic  
-Used car salesman  
-Sporting goods salesmen (That includes selling guns and knives, right?)  
-Bartender  
-Gambling instructor (Okay, so she stole that idea from _Ocean's Eleven._ )

Some of these are kind of a stretch, Lisa has to admit. But while Cicero is a relatively prosperous bit of small-town suburbs, it was hit just as hard as anywhere else by the crashing economy, and there aren't really any jobs to be had. Lisa retains gainful employment because she's self-employed; she bought into part-ownership of the gym where she teaches on Ben's fifth birthday. Even so, it's occasionally a struggle. If her parents hadn't left their house to her in their will, she'd have had to give in and move to the city a long time ago.

Dean's trying, really he is, but nobody's accepting applications and quite frankly Dean probably wouldn't last long at a job if they were. He hides his damage pretty well, but he's pretty messed up. With pretty good reason, obviously, but Lisa's not stupid, and she sees him tense up in the middle of large crowds, and she knows that people's willful disbelief drives him absolutely crazy. He's intense and sarcastic and sometimes hard to get along with, and he'd get his ass fired in less than a week if he didn't quit first.

It's fine with Lisa, honestly. She really doesn't give a damn if he finds a job or if he mopes around sorting her stepdad's old toolbox for the next _century._ She's just too grateful that he's even here, in spite of all the odds and everything he's gone through. Those three weeks after his early-morning appearance and that terrifying goodbye were some of the most stressful of her entire life, and the moment she opened her door and he was on her porch and he _came back_ were such a relief it was like suddenly breathing underwater. Every day she's just happy to wake up and see him in her home, where she can watch him and take care of him and know that he's (more or less) okay.

Dean cares, though. It's the dark side of his longing for so-called "normal life," the double-edged sword of all the stereotypes he can't seem to help but believe. In his mind the rulebook for normal includes being the kind of man that provides for his family (even though they don't especially need providing for) and his occasional jaunts to out-of-state poker games don't really cut it in his book. She knows that part of him is resentful of a father that always failed to provide for them (even if he will never, ever admit this out loud) and so he's determined to do better, even though that's not what they need from him. He doesn't seem to understand that _they_ adopted _him_ , not the other way around.

Lisa watches Dean pouring over the classifieds, hunched over the kitchen table one night long after Ben has gone to bed, and she thinks that she could almost hate Sam Winchester, for making Dean promise something so _explicitly_ normal. If he hadn't pushed one particular roadmap so hard then maybe Dean wouldn't be killing himself to fulfill some impossible ideal of the American dream.

But only almost. Because she knows that if Sam hadn't pushed so hard, Dean wouldn't be here at all, and as far as she's concerned that's the most important thing.

She comes up behind him and puts her hands on his shoulders, rubbing her knuckles lightly against the strained tendons on the side of his neck. Dean drops the newspaper willingly enough and leans back against her stomach with a grateful sigh.

"How's it going?" she murmurs into the dark quiet of the kitchen.

"Same as ever," he admits, his voice a tired husk. She can remember the intimate grit of it in her ear, waking up with him wrapped around her like some kind of constrictor and arching back into him for round two (or three, or four.) Now the sound leaves a lingering ache underneath her breastbone and she strokes his shoulder soothingly, helpless in the face of all the things in the world that seem determined to grind him down.

She reaches past him and she grabs the newspaper, tossing it blindly through the dark in the direction of the recycling bin. "Forget it tonight, okay? Just go to bed."

He looks annoyed at having his project literally taken out of his hands. "There were a couple good options in there," he protests, and she's willing to bet he's lying, because she read through that paper this morning and the classifieds had jack shit.

"It doesn't matter," she tells the top of his head, knowing that he probably won't listen. "Dean, it doesn't matter."

"I need to do something," he admits, and that's more than she thought she'd get. She thinks about her answer with care.

"You take care of us," she tells him, which isn't a lie and yet manages to avoid the larger truth. "That's more than something."

He doesn't answer, and she gives him one last squeeze of his shoulders and leaves him to his thoughts. Dean knows how to look after people; that's been Dean's entire purpose since he was four years old. In terms of valuable skills, it's the one thing he does the best out of everything in the world. She hopes he'll remember that and listen to her.

Of course, the more accurate truth would be to say that she and Ben look after him, but she isn't going to mention that fact to him. Dean let his brother take point for once in his life and Sam didn't come back; the idea of people taking care of him is more than a little terrifying. Lisa doesn't care, because she doesn't need him to admit it; she just needs him to stay.

 **~*~**

Things that Dean is embarrassed to admit he enjoys:

-Oprah.  
- _Dr. Sexy, MD._  
-Salads.  
-Hugging.  
-Sincere compliments that are unrelated to his cock in any way.  
-Books.

Dean's always been more of a tv person, a fact that he will loudly proclaim to anyone that brings it up, but Lisa knows for a fact that he likes to read, too. His nomadic life made for kind of a rocky relationship with any show that has an ongoing plotline, and she knows he's spent hours on his laptop watching illegally downloaded episodes of some of his old favorites. In some cases it's the first time he's ever seen them in order.

But he also has started going through her bookshelves, when he thinks she's not paying attention. She remembers, from before Ben, that he always had a box full of tapes in the front seat of his car, and that box used to contain a lot of books-on-tape alongside the Metallica and Def Leppard. Now it doesn't, and he shrugs off her pointed comments with something mumbled about dumping them before he went to meet Sam and Stanford. Couldn't bear to have his little brother realize that he could read, too, she guessed, not that Dean says anything more on the subject. Not that Dean ever does, when it comes to Sam.

At first she doesn't realize that he's going through her books at all. He's mostly reading when she's off at work, or during the hours it takes him to fall asleep, long after she and Ben have both gone to bed. And he's always careful to put things back exactly where he found them- a trait that isn't limited to her bookshelves, incidentally. It's like he's afraid to mess up what he still considers her space, even though everybody else knows that he's moved in to the house in every way that really matters.

Eventually, though, she figures out what he's doing with his spare time, and if it makes her grin a little, well, Dean doesn't seem to notice. The first few times she catches him with one of her books he tenses up and tries to laugh it off, but when he realizes that she's not going make fun or even say anything about it he gradually starts to relax. The sight of him sprawled out on the couch after dinner with a book in his hands becomes a common sight in the evenings, and even Ben starts to read a few of the shorter ones Dean particularly likes, which is nothing short of miracle considering his hatred of the printed word.

Dean is intelligent; she's known that since she met him. His brother was always the "smart one" and his father was a fiercely competent human being, and so Dean always cast himself as the obedient weapon arm, the family smartass, the quoting machine, but in his own way he's just as smart as any of them. Even years ago he could argue politics and pop culture with an informed enthusiasm that few could claim, and the decade since has only added experience and perspective. He knows a lot of odd things, and now he's finally getting a chance to fill in the gaps that traditional education would have filled. Plus, uh, a few others.

Lisa admits freely that she's not much of a reader. (Ben comes by this one honestly.) And when she does read it's generally for pleasure, not improvement. She's got a collection of classics that everyone buys because they think they ought to have, but mostly her shelves are full of silly mysteries and romance novels. Dean won't visit a library- too many memories related to Sam is her guess- and so after he works his way through all of her more intellectually substantial fare, he gives in and starts reading the brain-candy.

Lisa can't even pretend to find the sight of Dean with a bright pink romance novel in his hands anything but absolutely, desperately funny. He's such a _guy,_ just this utter man's-man with his car and his music and his swagger and here he is, reading something called _My Hidden Desire_. Yeah. That's hilarious any way you look at it.

Even better, he likes to explain the plots to her, shaking his head like if he has to suffer through this ridiculousness, then he's damn well going to share the pain. It's just that he does all the hilarious voices and uses phrases like "super evil demon wizards, and shit" when describing the characters, and he can get incredibly, incredibly into certain pairings when he's working his way through a series, and it _cracks her up._ When she first let Dean into her home she did it because it was obvious that he needed the help, but she never predicted how stupidly _happy_ it would make her to have him around. It's hard sometimes to remember life without him, when it was just her and Ben.

"So of course he jumps in front of the fuckin' bullet," Dean says, his mouth full of sandwich. She has an unexpected afternoon off from classes and Ben's at school, which is why she isn't throwing potato chips at his head for the cursing. "Popping off a few rounds at the shooter all the way, natch, 'cause he's the fuckin' badass or whatever, only after he takes out the hitman he passes out from the blood loss and Miss Southern Belle takes him in to nurse him back to health. Yeah, like you couldn't see _that_ coming."

"Well, he did save her life," Lisa points out reasonably.

"What, she's never heard of a hospital? Jesus. So of course there's like two hundred pages of him recuperating and getting horny at, like, the sound of her singing and shit, and then they have another hundred pages worth of sex and then get married and have ten babies or something. The end."

Lisa rolls her eyes. "That book was not four hundred pages long."

"Whatever, it _felt_ like it, Jesus. I thought it would never end." Dean beetles his brows at her from across the table. "There are some things that only make sense in porn, okay? The wounded hero does not get a boner for the chick that's changing his dressings. That shit's nasty."

"In case you haven't noticed, bright eyes, those books _are_ porn. They just make more of an effort at plot."

"Not much more," he grumbles, and she just has to bite her lip to keep from replying because he's so incredibly _cute_ about it, whining about nonsensical plots and making fun of the dialogue like he doesn't already have the next book in the series open on the coffee table.

She also wants to point out that Dean himself isn't much of one to talk when it comes to wounded heroes being taken in by a woman whose life he's saved, but it's possible he's aware of that, and bringing it up in the context of the romance novel would just be _awkward._ So she goes back to eating her salad, and says nothing at all.

 **~*~**

Things that Dean knows how to cook:

-Spaghetti  
-Scrambled eggs  
-Sandwiches  
-Anything involving a grill.

He's surprisingly capable in the kitchen, considering his motel-to-motel upbringing. He's got the right instincts when it comes to meal planning and basic prep, which makes sense when she remembers that he was basically responsible for his own and his brother's meals for most of their young lives. He's good with grills because of all the times they had to camp out, but his problems in an actual kitchen come from a lifetime of limited budgets and thus, cheap food.

"We ate a lot of mac 'n cheese," he tells her, grinning, and for the first time he looks nostalgic but doesn't pause to take and take a gut-punched breath at the memory of Sam.

Currently, Dean is in the kitchen, chopping things with intentions of braving a casserole. Ben is perched on a stool that Dean dragged up for him, supervising the process and looking about as dubious as Lisa feels. She knows how to cook but rarely has the time, so time spent in the kitchen is really kind of a foreign concept for him. He knows that _other_ moms cook things, but unless it's cookies or cupcakes for a bake sale or a _really_ special occasion, like Dean's first dinner there after losing Sam, Lisa doesn't cook. And it's all the other _moms_ who cook things anyway, so Ben doesn't really know what to do with the idea of his car-gun-hunter-awesome _idol_ cooking dinner.

"But isn't this kind of a chick thing?" Ben complains.

(Neither one of them know that she's standing in the doorway, watching. Ben's not stupid and he knows what she thinks of that kind of talk- and Dean, she thinks, wouldn't say what he does next if he knew he had an audience.)

"Sometimes chicks like your mom have better things to do," Dean says simply, like he's not addressing centuries of patriarchy in one fell swoop- _him,_ the dudest dude of all dudes. "And sometimes people don't have moms to do it for them."

Ben looks shamed, but Dean isn't done. "Besides, if a man's too dumb to feed himself 'cause he keeps waiting for some chick to do it for him, that's pretty pathetic, y'know?"

Ben looks suitably chastised this time, and Lisa judges that this is probably her best chance to interrupt. "Evenin', boys," she drawls and knocks on the doorframe. "This a private party, or can anyone join?"

They both look glad to see her, and Ben holds out his arms for a hug she's still grateful to bestow. She always thought he'd stop accepting "girly stuff" from her by now, but his experience with the changelings changed him. He's still got the same swagger as the kid who charmed half the girls in kindergarten out of the pudding cups, but it's tempered with a particular kind of bravery that allows him to just _not care_ about all the complicated kid rules of what's cool or not. Dean's a lot like that, but with Dean it's just because he approaches social conventions like a foreign language he can't speak fluently; he didn't have enough of a normal childhood to know that he's _supposed_ to care, half the time.

"Where'd you find the recipe?" she asks Dean, as he gathers up the tomato slices and layers them into the dish. "Are you sneaking cookbooks when I'm not looking?"

"The internet is a beautiful thing," he tells her.

"You're turning into quite the domestic goddess," she teases.

Dean rolls his eyes, and she sees him bite back the _oh, fuck you_ that wants to escape. (She's only given him the lecture about "little ears" about _five thousand times._ ) "Well, for the moment I'm gloriously unemployed, so I might as well work on my househusband skills."

He regrets the use of the world as soon as it leaves his mouth, Lisa can see that, but there's nothing he can say about it in front of Ben. He gives her a look of mute apology, all good-natured teasing gone from his face.

Lisa hates to see him lose that fantastic smile that appears all too rarely these days, but she does think that this is something they need to address. Dean's been nervous about this stuff for a while now. "Ben, have you finished your homework?"

Her kid isn't stupid, and he knows something's going on, but he's also pretty aware of the Grownup Things rule, and so far he's been pretty willing to deal an increase of Grownup Things Talks if it means that Dean's around. "Just the math problems," he says, but he hops down from the stool, and he gives Dean a hug before diplomatically going back to his room. Dean looks a little shell-shocked at the casual expression of affection.

Seriously, Lisa sometimes just loves her kid to _bits._

"I didn't mean it like that," Dean says as soon as Ben's gone, immediately defensive. "I just meant, you know, I'm your guest so I can at least pay you back with some dinner once in a while-"

He can probably go on like this for a while, but Lisa cuts him off with a hug of her own. He flails a little, unsure what to do with hands that are covered in tomato juice, but when she refuses him the courtesy of letting go he manages to wipe them off on his jeans and cautiously links them behind her back.

"You're not a guest," she says into his shirt, so he can't see her face and realize how sad it makes her that he still thinks that way. "And okay, no, you're not my husband because _no,_ but you're basically Ben's co-parent so it's close enough." At his smothered noise of disagreement she does lift her head so she can glare him properly. "How do you not know that?"

"You're his parent, Lize," Dean says seriously. "I'm just keeping a promise."

There are a lot of arguments Lisa can make to this, and in fact she's kept a list, adding to it what seems like every day. But dean isn't ready to hear it, and his refusal to admit all that he does for Ben doesn't lessen the impact of _all that he does for Ben._ So she gives him her most serious look and says, "If you don't like househusband, then you'll just have to live with 'domestic goddess.'"

This time Dean does say "Oh, fuck you," but he leans down to press a kiss on her forehead, and when he straightens back up, he's smiling again. Good enough.

 **~*~**

Her step-brother hates him.

Well, no, that's not exactly true. Thom doesn't even _know_ Dean. But he hates the idea of him. He hates the sound of a man who makes his living as a _mechanic_ (this is what Dean called himself when they first met; perpetrating the lie is easier than explaining "hunter" to her extremely skeptical step-brother) and listens to classic rock and says "dude" and never graduated high school. (Thom is kind of a snob, in a rich-liberal-guilt kind of way.) He hates the thought of some strange guy staying on her couch and being part of Ben's life. Most of all, he hates the man that Lisa's taken in when she's spurned every offer of his help.

"I just don't know what you were thinking, letting him stay with you," Thom bitches for about the thousandth time, one Saturday afternoon while Dean's gone with Ben to Little League practice. (This will, like all the Saturdays previous, turn into an extended trip to Dairy Queen after practice is done.) "What do you even know about him?"

Lisa sighs and tucks the phone more firmly between her ear and shoulder. She's folding laundry, because if she's going to waste her time arguing with Thom about Dean (for about the thousandth time), then she's at least going to get something constructive done in the meantime. "He saved Ben's life from that kidnapper," she says, repeating the story she and Ben had cooked up to explain to all and sundry what had happened. "The police didn't even have a clue, but Dean found him and save him, saved _all_ of the kids. Be a little more grateful."

"He's a wanderer, Lize," Thom insists, though some of the belligerence is gone. Whatever Thom's faults, and they are legion, he does love his nephew. It's why he hates the fact that Dean's helping to raise him. "I'm not even sure that's his real name. There's no record of a Dean Campbell being born in Kansas, did you know that?"

Well, yes, there wouldn't be for obvious reasons, but now Lisa's getting pissed for real, instead of just annoyed. "Did you have him investigated? Did you seriously do that?"

There's a pause on the other end of the line as Thom registers his error. "I'm just worried about you and Ben," he says, as if that excuses things. As if he does anything else.

"What the hell, Thom!" she explodes. "We _talked_ about this and I told you to back the hell off! It's none of your business!"

"I'm your brother," he retorts. "It's my business."

"Step-brother," Lisa corrects sullenly. She was _fifteen_ when he and his dad came along; it's not like he raised her and helped her with her homework and protected her and made her lunch before she left for school. She likes him, most of the time she even loves him, but he's not Dean who earned his loyalty when it comes to family; he skipped straight to the part where he glared and huffed at any boys who came near her and hasn't really left it since.

Thom sighs softly in her ear, a little hurt as always by her insistence, and says, "Doesn't make me any less family, Lize."

That's true. It's absolutely true, and except for Ben he's really all the family she's got. And she does mean to apologize, really she does, but then she thinks about Dean and Sam and what comes out of her mouth is, "Doesn't make you any less of a pain in my ass, either," and then she hangs up on him.

She's angrily scrubbing the stovetop when Dean and Ben get back from Dairy Queen. Both of them stop in the doorway, and when she looks up Ben has his _crap she's pissed I'd better go play xbox before she starts assigning chores_ expression, but Dean just looks understanding.

"Called Thom?"

"The big jerk," she responds automatically, then glances apologetically at Ben. "Sorry, honey, your uncle isn't a jerk, I'm just frustrated."

Ben rolls his eyes. He likes Thom okay, but Thom is a pale shadow compared to the Awesomeness Of Dean, and Thom hasn't exactly been subtle about his opinions. (There's a reason Lisa started making her weekly calls on Saturday afternoons when the house was safely empty.) "Yeah, whatever."

Dean regards her solemnly for a moment, then produces a Blizzard cup from behind his back. She knows without looking that it's Heath Bar Crunch, her absolute favorite.

"Where's the spoon?" she asks, without looking away from his face.

Ben holds up a plastic spoon.

Seconds later she lunges forward and gives them both a hug, one arm around Dean's waist and the other around Ben's shoulders. "You two are the best," she declares, and ruffles Ben's hair before leaning up to give Dean a kiss on the cheek. "Seriously, the best."

Thom can go fuck himself.

 **~*~**

Ben is not Dean's son. She didn't lie to Dean about that; DNA tests are pretty conclusive, and it was definitely that asshole biker a few weeks after Dean blew back out of town. But sometimes Lisa can't help but wonder.

The similarities between them go deeper than the freckles and the hazel eyes and the brown hair with the same almost-cowlick in the front. Deeper even than an appreciation for the female half of the species and a love of terrible cock rock music and classic cars and a hip-shot swagger that no kid under the age of thirteen should be able to pull off. There's something that's just the _same_ about them on a fundamental level: their sneaky generosity and desire to help people and steady faith in values like family and loyalty and looking after your people at the expense of yourself. Sometimes Lisa will walk into a room and see them talking in low voices, Dean crouched down so that Ben can meet his eyes, and despite the age difference between them it's like looking at mirror images.

Ever since the additional revelation of _angels_ to Lisa's repertoire of weird, she's had a theory that she hasn't shared with _anyone,_ not even Ben. She doesn't think that anyone messed with her kid's genetics because he's still _her kid_ and she refuses to believe otherwise, but she wonders nonetheless. Wonders if the angels hadn't maybe wanted a second Dean Winchester, if someone upstairs looked at this man and thought _one is just not enough for this fucked-up world,_ and if that someone hadn't taken all the best parts of Dean and put them in her son.

She knows it's a little ridiculous, even considering the really kind of eerie similarities between the two of them. From what Dean's told her angels don't actually care about what happens to this world, so why would they care about humans who try to save it? But there are more than angels and demons still hanging around even in this new world of science, Lisa's sure of that, and maybe someone, somewhere, still cared about people. Maybe.

Really, she chooses to believe it because it would mean that Ben is Dean's son, too. And Lisa's always been utterly unwilling to allow anyone else to lay claim on her son, but with Dean it would be different. Dean's the only one who could possibly love Ben as much as she does. No one else in the world understands family as well as Dean Winchester.

 **~*~**

People that understand exactly what Dean means to her and Ben:

-Her  
-Ben

Nobody else, including Dean himself, even comes close.

 **~*~**

It's Ben's birthday, and he's having a party that includes the entire neighborhood. It's the first one since his fateful eighth, because he's refused to celebrate the last couple of years. He admitted to her that he'd decided birthdays were bad luck, but when Dean started planning a cookout, Ben kept silent and here they are.

Dean's in the backyard, manning the grill and holding forth to several of the dads and at least one admiring mother. Whatever he's talking about involves a lot of explosive gestures and much waving of the spatula, but Dave and Carrie are laughing and Ted looks intrigued. Probably nothing involving monsters, then.

Lisa's watching him through the kitchen window. She came in to retrieve the forgotten potato salad, but she glanced outside on her way back and paused, arrested by the sight of him _happy._ Even all those years ago, when he was just a bad boy in a leather jacket with no fixed address, even then he'd never seemed really happy. Oh, he had fun and he got excited and he laughed, but she could see how sad he was, whenever he thought she wasn't paying attention. The specter of Sam's absence always pulled at him, the weight on his shoulders he couldn't forget- not when there was hope to get him back again.

But now Sam is forever beyond his reach, and watching him laughing with a bunch of suburban parents who can't conceive of something waiting in the dark, she wonders if maybe Dean has actually been able to make some kind of peace with that fact. Maybe he's accepted that he's finally gotten off that merry-go-round, that the endless cycle of sacrifice and revenge has finally ended with the biggest sacrifice of all.

Or maybe he just enjoys telling wild stories to an appreciative audience, and he's too caught up in his tale to remember his grief. She doesn't know. For all her careful observation and obsessive chronicling of all things Dean, there are things she doesn't know about him and never will.

"You okay?"

She looks down and there's Ben, empty plastic cup on one hand and a worried expression on his face. She wonders how long she's been standing by the kitchen window with a bowl of potato salad in her hands.

"I'm fine, honey," she tells him- and then something in his hazel eyes prompts her to add, "Just worried about Dean."

Ben smiles. "Dean's always fine."

And, okay, that's blatantly untrue; Dean is not-fine more often than not. But there's something about Ben's unshakable faith in his idol that makes her feel better, anyway.

"He'll come back," Ben adds helpfully. "Just like before."

At this she looks at him sharply. "Dean's not going anywhere." Dean would have _told_ her, she knows he would. He wouldn't have hidden this. "Why would you think that?"

"Well, when Sam comes back," Ben says reasonably. "Dean'll go with him then. But he'll come back."

Lisa doesn't bother pointing out that Sam is dead, because Ben knows this; Dean lacks the gene that makes parents want to lie to their kids about terrible things. "You think Sam's coming back?" she asks, because she can't help herself. "Really?"

Ben just looks back at her, her gorgeous, funny-wise, kid, too old behind his eyes. She can barely believe that this amazing little person came from her. "Don't you?" he asks.

And of course, _of course_ she does. The Winchester brothers have weathered ever storm and gotten every miracle and she finds, upon reflection, that the part of her that still looks for the other end of a rainbow after a thunderstorm can't believe that the Winchester brothers will be separated forever.

"But Dean will come back to us, too," she says. It's not a question. Ben nods anyway.

"We're family," he says, as if that's the only fact that matters. And to Dean, of course, it really is. It's one of the many things he has in common with Ben.

"Smart kid," she says, and hands him the potato salad so that she has a hand free to ruffle his hair. "Go take this out to the table, and I'll mix up some more punch."

"Okay," he says, and trundles obediently out. She glances out the window, and sees Dean laughing at something Ted just told him.

She knows exactly how he feels.

 **~*~**

The thing is, she loves Dean. Really, she does; it's stupid and ungovernable and sometimes unbearable and she thinks about him all the time. It's just that she doesn't think about him as a lover.

When she opened her front door to the broken, desperate, hopeful man on her front porch, she fell head-over-heels, the same screamingly headlong rush she felt when Ben was placed in her arms for the very first time. It's the same hopeless, rueful affection, the same fierce protectiveness. Lisa took a grief-stricken Dean Winchester into her arms and she thought, _I will kill anyone who touches you_ and she meant it every bit as much as she had for Ben.

Lisa watches Dean playing catch in the back yard with Ben and thinks _there's my boys._ She kisses Dean on the forehead before she goes to bed at night, right after she tucks Ben in, and she lies awake at night thinking of all the horrible things that could happen to either of them and how she could possibly stop it. She doesn't think about him as a son, couldn't possibly what with all the sex they had, but she doesn't think about him as a husband, either, or a partner or boyfriend or anything like that. He's part of _her family,_ and she feels more desperately possessive, more stupidly wondering and overjoyed, then she's felt about anyone except the boy she carried within her for nine months.

It's not rational, not reasonable, and it makes no sense. But that's how it is. She loves him, and she greets every smile, ever joke and cooking accomplishment and book review and every single time he's brave enough to talk about his brother- every time she's waiting with a proud smile that any parent would recognize.

 **~*~**

When Sam shows up at her door a week later, she's not even surprised.

Sam is, when she slaps him. (Much, much later, she's going to replay that expression over and over and laugh herself sick. But not right now.) When she opens the door and finds him on her porch she just stares at him for a minute, and he hunches his shoulders and ducks his chin and gives her this wary, hopeful look that is designed to convey _don't freak out_. He probably uses that one a lot on civilians during stressful situations, and he's probably expecting her to have hysterics over the fact that he's come back from the dead. Boy, is he wrong.

She hauls off and hits him across the face- and not a fake stage slap, either. His hands flies up to his cheek in shocked reaction, and when he drops his again there's already a red blotch forming. He sort of lurches back a step, his eyes going wide, and she grabs his sleeve before he can actually start to step off the porch.

"You are _late,_ " she informs him, and he sort of winces, because yeah, she kind of doubts he just made it back in the last twenty-four hours; he looks too comfortable in his skin for that. "And also you are an _asshole._ "

He nods solemnly, not trying to tug away from her grip on his coat. "I definitely am," he agrees sadly, and adds, "I know Dean's pretty settled here, and I don't want to take him away, I just want to see him and tell him that I'm sorry-"

She doesn't really want to listen to Sam's apologies any more than she suspects Dean will, so she cuts him off and says, "There are rules."

Sam's eyebrows fly up across his ridiculous forehead. "Rules?"

"Yes," she says firmly. "This time, there are going to be rules. When you are on a hunt, you _tell me._ When you get in trouble with the law, you _tell me._ When you move around, you _tell me where you are._ If you get in trouble, I want to know." She takes a deep breath. "That's what family does."

Sam swallows. "I think I can manage that."

"And when you're in between hunts, and don't tell me it doesn't happen because I know it does, you get your asses back here. And don't give me crap about protecting me because there's no way I'm safer without the two best hunters in the country than I am on my own, so screw you both. You come back. That's the rule."

Sam nods quickly. "Yes ma'am."

"And whatever it is that you're after, you'd better be back by this time next week because Ben has a game. Are we understood?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Good." She lets go of his sleeve. "Then come inside, Dean and Ben are at Little League practice and it'll be a while before they get back. Do you prefer coffee or tea?"

"Coffee's fine," Sam says, still a little dumbstruck, but he stops her before they can get any further than the foyer. "You know, I really didn't come here to take him back."

Maybe not consciously. "Sweetie, once he sees you he's not letting you leave without him and we both know that's the truth," she says kindly. "Now go in the kitchen and have a seat, I'll be in there in a second to start the coffee. Oh!" she adds, something occurring to her, "What's your favorite type of ice cream?"

Sam looks a little shell-shocked at all these rapid changes of conversational direction, but he answers readily enough. "Butter pecan."

"Okay," she says, and shoos him into the kitchen. She takes out her cell phone and texts Dean, _grab a cup of whatever's closest to butter pecan, would you?_ and then turns it to silent so see won't be tempted to answer any of Dean's questions before he gets here. She'd hate to spoil the surprise.

Then she just stops and puts one hand against the wall and just _leans_ there for a long moment. It's just all _too much,_ the Winchesters; she doesn't know if she can bear to watch another round of heartbreak between them.

But she couldn't bear to have them walk away from her, either. She doesn't love Sam the way she does Dean, not yet, but she doesn't think it will take long, and she doesn't think Ben will mind another addition. She yanks her phone back out just long enough to add a note to her to-do list: _start shopping for sofa bed,_ then puts it back in her pocket. If Sam's going to be here too she's going to need more than just her faded old couch. She'll just have to find a way to make room.

"Okay," she breathes to herself, then she straightens up and she goes into the kitchen and she starts brewing some coffee, and then she sits down at the table with Sam so they can wait for the rest of their family to come home.

 

.end.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the song "White Flag" by Madeline Adams, which I discovered through the awesome fanmix [Running Full Steam Ahead](http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/447779.html). I was listening to it and found myself wanting to write a story about Lisa, because even on limited exposure Lisa seems pretty fucking awesome, and how she would deal with Dean recovering and trying to find normal. I'm not _entirely_ sure that I wrote the story I first intended, but I definitely wrote the story I _wanted_ to write about how Lisa loves Dean as helplessly as any one of us fans. It's gen because I like the idea of the pairing but I have a hard time imagining Dean being able to be sexually and romantically active when his death drive is in high gear, maybe after he's had Sam back for a while he and Lisa will change their relationship again, or maybe they won't. I don't know.
> 
> Either way: Lisa Braeden is awesome, ask me how.


End file.
